Southern Miss makes first Sun Belt media days appearance
Southern Miss head football coach Will Hall, along with receiver Jason Brownlee and linebacker Swayze Bozeman, took the stage Wednesday on day two of Sun Belt media days in New Orleans.
It was the Golden Eagles first appearance in the conference’s annual event on the 27th day of the school’s SBC tenure.
As such, many of the topics of the day revolved around the team’s new schedule and league-mates, but Hall also provided insights into the growth of the football program in year two of his tenure.
Here are three takeaways from the Golden Eagles’ day at the podium.
Loss at linebacker
Hall confirmed the news reported Monday that redshirt junior linebacker Hayes Maples suffered a lower body injury during summer workouts and could miss the upcoming season.
Maples has 183 career tackles with 15.5 tackles for loss. The middle linebacker was second on the team in stops last year and was a third-team selection on Phil Steele’s preseason All-Sun Belt team.
“That’s the reality of life,” Hall said. “Bad things happen. And a lot of the time bad things happen to really good people, this was one of the those situations we use as a teachable moment.”
Hall mentioned the silver lining was the depth the linebacker room has built. The Golden Eagles still have Santrell Latham, a sixth-year senior with over 150 career tackles to pair with Bozeman in the middle of the defense.
Ole Miss transfer Daylen Gill and Gulfport native TQ Newsome also figure to have their roles increased in Maples’ absence.
“That’s the one position on our team where we got a lot of depth,” Hall said.
Offensive growth
The struggles that plagued the USM offense a year ago are well-documented. A carousel of quarterbacks and a near-non-existent offensive line led to the Eagles’ worst offensive output since the 2013 season.
Redshirt freshman Ty Keyes will step back into the starting role and he has four returning starters on the front line. Hall believes a number of offseason additions will turn around the fortunes of the most important position groups on the team.
“One of the first things we did going into the offseason was hire Sam Gregg as offensive line coach,” Hall said. “Sam’s one of the top O-line coaches in the country... we added seven scholarship O-lineman to that room over the course of the year, which is a lot... so we think we’ll be improved on the offensive line. I’m not saying we’re a finished product there, by no means, but we think we’ll play a lot better than what we did last year.”
According to Brownlee, last year’s performance is still weighing on the returning player’s minds as motivation for a new year.
“Our offensive line has been working their butts off every day and putting in overtime,” Brownlee said. “They got a chip on their shoulder going into this year knowing what they got to do.”
New travel partners
As with the previous first-year SBC school’s coaches who took the stage this week, the conversation with Hall inevitably shifted to the team’s status as the new kids on the block.
With a new conference comes several new travel partners that are significantly closer to Hattiesburg than the school’s previous arrangement.
For Hall, it’s the name-brand recognition of USM’s new rivals that have him, his team and the fans excited about the new era.
“Our fan base is extremely excited because when they wake up Sunday and Monday morning and they’re drinking coffee at the coffee shop, now we’re playing Troy, we’re playing (ULM), we’re playing (Louisiana), we’re playing South Alabama, Arkansas State, like they know those teams,” Hall said. “They’ve played them before. There’s instant recollection from the past from playing those teams. They know where they’re at. Anybody who thinks that doesn’t matter is wrong.
“In the day and age where college football is kind of moving away from that at the autonomy level, down where we are I think it’s been really smart by our commissioner... to get back to this geographic footprint with a lot of schools that really care about football.”
The Golden Eagles play their first SBC game on Oct. 8 at Troy.
This story was originally published July 27, 2022 at 4:22 PM.
